Best Cookbooks for Sous Vide/LTLT Cooking

[nickrey]

Dale's book is out.

The link for it is here. It is A$69.95. The book is hardcover, 223 pages and covers sous vide cooking from basics up to some quite advanced restaurant dishes.

After an introductory chapter on cooking with sous vide, he covers cooking of five different classes of food: eggs, poultry & game, meat, fish, and fruit & vegetables.

From my experience, the times and temperatures given are appropriate and well within accepted safety guidelines.

The basics are covered well and recipes are clear and concise. They are accompanied by pictures showing plating of the dishes.

Dale is a trained and very experienced chef who moved into selling sous vide equipment after adopting it in his own kitchen many years ago.

He has sourced recipes from 36 other chefs as well as presenting his own take on a number of dishes.

This is possibly the first book to bridge the gap between a simple presentation of sous vide cooking (eg. Douglas Baldwin and Jason Lodgson's books) and the restaurant books that can verge into the complex. He does it well and the involvement of a range of chefs allows you to see their different approaches to using this cooking medium.

I enjoyed browsing through the book and will use a number of techniques from the book in my own cooking.

[Robenco15]

How do the recipes translate to the US? If you are able to answer that.

[Dale Prentice]

As we represent PolyScience in Australia I was mindful that we may have USA reader of our book. We have all of the measurements in metric and temperatures as C/F

I hope this helps, I also assume the text has an Australian accent but only our customers could tell you that.

[Robenco15]

I'm good with metric and C. More curious about the availability of the various ingredients.

[nickrey]

Probably the only thing you won't be able to find is Pademelon, which is a kind of small kangaroo. I'm Australian and I'd never heard of it either. The recipe says to substitute kangaroo but you could just as easily substitute venison for a very similar texture and flavour profile.

The book has recipes from all around the world, including ones from Nathan Myhrvold, Wylie Dufresene, J. Kenji-Lopez-Alt, Brad Farmerie, and so on. I don't think you'd be either frustrated in not having availability of ingredients nor disappointed.

[Batard]

Dale's book had two reviews on Amazon before it became unavailable. Might we hope to see At Home with Sous Vide again? 

Edited December 9, 2014 by Batard (log)

[Dale Prentice]

Dale's book had two reviews on Amazon before it became unavailable. Might we hope to see At Home with Sous Vide again? 

Hi Batard, it is on Amozon here http://www.amazon.com/Home-Sous-Vide-Dale-Prentice/dp/0987526324 please let me know if it appears unavailble somewhere and I will see if I can fix it or remove that listing.

[Honkman]

The price of $90 seems a bit high for a such book. It would be nice to have at least a chance to have some kind of preview and/or some serious reviews

[Anna N]

The price of $90 seems a bit high for a such book. It would be nice to have at least a chance to have some kind of preview and/or some serious reviews

But that is not an Amazon.com price. That is a reseller price and the book is coming from Australia. In other words Amazon.com is not offering this book. At least that is the way I am reading it.

[Dale Prentice]

But that is not an Amazon.com price. That is a reseller price and the book is coming from Australia. In other words Amazon.com is not offering this book. At least that is the way I am reading it.

Yes that is right, the price includes the $27 postage as Amazon only includes $3 postage and this does not cover airpost from Australia. We are not big enough to ship it to Amazon for them to redistribute.

[Batard]

I'd really like to own this book, but it's hard for me to swallow the $27.00 shipping fee. But I hope it does very well, and will soon have a USA distribution point. Thanks very much. 

[blackp]

Dale's book is one of the better SV books I have.  It has a good instructional section and lots of interesting recipes including some from guest chefs.  It is illustrated with good quality colour photography (unlike most SV books) and I have cooked several recipes from it with success.

 

I understand the reservation of adding $27 postage, but if you can overlook that it is a good book which is easy to recommend.

[Anna N]

Has anyone seen/used the British book on sous vide by Alex Shannon and Chris Holland? If so, please share your thoughts. It is self published by a company that makes Sous Vide equipment and hence tends to push some of that equipment especially the Smoking Gun. Despite this shortcoming I find it an interesting read.

It is available on Amazon.com and is called Sous Vide - The Art of Precision Cooking.